-Livemint.com Pulses are important from the perspectives of food security, environmental sustainability and balanced nutrition Most pulses such as pigeon pea (tur dal), black gram (urad), green gram (mung), field beans (waal), moth beans (matki) and horse gram (kulith) are native to the Indian subcontinent and have been an integral part of our diet for centuries. However, the single-minded focus on cereals over the last 50 years—the green revolution in wheat and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The countrywide monsoon rainfall this season was three per cent below average instead of the predicted six per cent above average, but it was distributed well enough to promise good crop yields, scientists said. An end-of-season analysis by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that the quantum of the all-India rainfall was about 97 per cent of the long-period average. It also reveals that 27 of the country’s 35...

-The Indian Express Swachh Bharat completes two years, but eliminating open defecation is a distant goal. October 2 marks the second anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Announcing a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019 was a great idea, but now that we are 40 per cent through India’s flagship sanitation campaign, it is a good time to assess how much progress the SBM has made. Unfortunately, it is impossible...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet Swachh Bharat initiative may be celebrating two years with much fanfare on Sunday but just a fifth of the respondents in a recent nationwide survey say local municipalities have improved garbage collection or cleanliness. The study found the hygiene has visibly improved in only four states – three of them ruled by the BJP while the rest of India reported marginal or no...

-PTI Invoking Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha against the colonial rule, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today mooted ‘Swachhagraha’ movement for a clean India which he said is not something that can be achieved by budget allocations alone. He also took a jibe at those who claim that the ‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign launched by him has failed by showing pictures of garbage on roads and other places, saying at least there is awareness now on...